The exhibition opening these days in Udine (Friuli, Italy) displays an amount of artworks coming from the Luxardo Collection. Luxardo is the surname of a doctor of the Friuli area that was able to collect immediately after the end of the First World War more than 5600 magazines and monographs. The Luxardo Collection, now part of the collection of Musei Civici, is a large window from where people can view what was produced in terms of illustration and propaganda images in the different armies and fronts. The exhibition develops and takes into consideration the appearance of the cinema as an essential tool for the control of an already biased imagery. The last section of the exhibition is dedicated to the "new" art of illustration and comics, introducing to the works of artists such as Joe Sacco, Gipi, Manuele Fior, Jacques Tardi and Hugo Pratt. The exhibition will run untill the beginning of January 2018.

Opening: March, Saturday 25th at 11.00 a.m., at Castello di Duino's Bunker (via Duino 32, 34011, Duino Aurisina – Italy) - The participation to the opening is by reservation only (via mail at info@iodeposito.org or via the B#Side War App)

Opening hours: from 25th March 2017 to 2nd April 2017; from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. (closed on Tuesdays). Free entry.

Infoline: www.iodeposito.org; www.bsidewar.org

In collaboration with the Gruppo Ermada Flavio Vidonis
and the Castle of Duino, IoDeposito Ngo presents on Saturday
25th March at 11.00 a.m.the sound art installation PANOPTICOby Greta Lusoli, at the Castello di Duino's Bunker. The event is organized
thanks to the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and the patronage
of UNESCO and it will be available until the 2nd April 2017: from 9:30 a.m.
to 5:30 p.m. (closed on Tuesdays). This new appointment belongs to the third
edition of the diffuse artistic and cultural Festival B#SIDE
WAR, which is promoted by IoDeposito through numerous Italian and
international events such as exhibitions, conferences and research project
(www.bsidewar.org).

One hundred years ago, Europe looked like a big
open-air prison: almost fifteen million people used to be trapped inside
inhuman war jails and even more civilians were trapped between refugee camps
and their own houses, living a life of destruction and deprivation. The sound
art installationPAN-ὀπτικός by Greta Lusoli relates to that
terrible war scenario trying to evoke and reconstruct in the mind of the
listener the archetype prison designed by the philosopher and jurist J. Bentham
at the end of XVIII century. Born with the intent to make the jails more
efficient, less expensive and easier to monitor, the Bentham's structure provided only one warden
who, standing in the centre of the building, was able to guard at the same time
all of the prisoners in their cells developed in a circle around the central
space. In this way the prison cells became transparent: the privacy of the
prisoners and the preservation of their intimacy (so, their inner
identity) completely disappeared, stoking a dangerous process of
objectualization and dehumanization of the prisoner.

PAN-ὀπτικός works through
a stratification of its deepest meanings: there are at least three intrinsic
factors related to this immaterial but complex intervention of public art. The
first analysis is a sensorial one: to evoke the cruel architecture of
Panopticon, Greta Lusoli project into the proxemic space of the listener a
vibrant, deep, screeching and unpleasant sound that resonate inside the chest
and memory of the listener with universal and archetypical echoes of a
primordial energy, reminding to ancestral alert signals. This sound create an emotional
correspondence, as a summa of all the alert signals coming from the
animal world, including the most primitive ones whose have been extinguished. The
second level of interpretation tunes the experience of this 18th-century
architecture with the tragedy of contemporary conflicts. The choice of an
architecture as a symbol of an unseen reality (but too much common in our
contemporaneity) hit the headlines from a mathematics and conceptual proportion
trough that the sound resonate in the space: the minutes within a year are
divided with the numbers of prisoners that every year, today, are victims of
conflicts. In fact, the sound reverberates every 5 minutes and 53 seconds,
underlining the impressive quantity of war prisoners that nowadays still loose
their freedom in conflicts. Finally, a third metaphorical matrix concern
to the dissociation of polarities see-be seen. The vastness of the conflicts
that is gripping the entire world is not read today by our eyes but, thanks to
the sound that powerfully touch the deepest strings of our soul, it can be
clearly perceived in our minds.

An important role is played by the location. The
Castel of Duino, completely destroyed due to its proximity to the front
during the First World War, was under bombardments of the allies on Monfalcone
during the Second World War. Villagers used to seek refuge inside the big
Bunker, venturing into the deep cave and waiting in the dark that the worst was
over. The sound art intervention, installed in the last room of the basement,
take the listener at the same time in one space and in many others, comparing
the “now and here” of the listener physical presence, with the “then and
there” of the victims and prisoners of the conflict. A vibrant and harsh
sound will vibrate inside the bunker of the castle, reflecting an old fear that
can be dissolved only by the light
expectancy coming through a window in front of the sea.

Mario Puccini comes back in the city which gave the title to one of the
most representative Italian memorialistic war report of the Twentieth Century,
his Davanti a Trieste. The critical edition curated by Tancredi Artico
and published by Mursia will be presented on Friday the 3rd March at 6.00 p.m.,
in the Ubik book store in Trieste (Piazza della Borsa, 15). The new edition is
the editorial result of a research projects undertaken by IoDeposito Ngo, in
collaboration of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and with patronage of UNESCO and
Council of Europe. The study project has involved many pofessors, Ph.Ds and
university researchers. The book launch of Trieste belongs in fact to the third
edition of the diffuse artistic and cultural Festival B#SIDE WAR, which is
promoted by IoDeposito through numerous Italian and international events such
as exhibitions, conferences and research project (www.bsidewar.org).

The prolific author Mario Puccini (Senigallia, 1887 - Rome, 1957) was
one of the literatus of «Voce» (the most important Italian magazine of
the early ‘900) circle, who have been able to deeply influence the fortunes of
the following history of literature affecting particularly the neorealist
poetry. As many times defined by Vasco Pratolini «one of the master the Italian
literature must bring justice», Mario Puccini have been also a soldier,
crossing, during the First World War, all the Friuli Venezia Giulia territory,
from the Carso to the Piave. From this human experience, in which the literary
experience merges with the bellic one, is born a war diaries trilogy that
includes Dal Carso al Piave (1918), Davanti a Trieste (1919) and Così
ho visto il Friuli (1919), which represents one of the most important
memorial and literary record about World War I on the international scene.

Davanti a Trieste is a staunch and empathic portrait of war days, in
which is presented the collective feeling of his comrades and is shown how they
perceived reality as if they were a single organism. Lieutenant Puccini gets
therefore straight to the heart of things, with his desire to pay tribute to
the men who sacrificed their own lives with a valorous and touching simplicity.
The writing is limpid and incisive, focused on a strong attention to the human
dimension of the conflict, trough an effective formal modernity free from
aesthetic temptations (which is the distinctive style of the whole Puccini's
literary creation).

Thanks to the clear and anti-rhetorical prose, Puccini's pen is able to
weave the warp of storytelling with a disarming balance between the immediate
crudity of the historical evidence on the one hand and, on the other hand, the
human experience transferred to the reader in the form of a poetic literary
language, which yearns for salvation and redemption from a senseless and brutal
war, able to engulf the reality. The pulsating and genuine compassion of the
war-man intertwines with a strong sensitivity about the formal and linguistic
experimentation: Puccini's triptych on the Great War is in fact a work able to
represent the emotions of a great humanity and at the same time of linguistic
and literary innovation, presenting itself as an organic historical evidence of
events and of the past of the war. The book curator Tancredi Artico portrays Davanti
a Trieste as an «exceptional direct testament of the Great War, which can
be at the same level of others Italian literary war works as Guerra del
’15by Stuparich or Giorni di
guerra by Comisso»: Puccini was able to create a memorial work important
for its anticlassical statute and for the peculiar chronological concatenation,
which makes of writing a mean of salvation.

ACROSS THE RIVER

Dear Visitor,

welcome to World War I Bridges, the Italy-based radar of First World War legacy and initiatives in the pipeline for the Centenary. Our interests are in the "units" here below and military equipment is not on the top of our minds. You can surf this site also starting from these "units".

Why Bridges? The armies used to explode the bridges in war operations. We now try to build new bridges during the WWI Centenary from Maserada sul Piave, a small Italian village along the Piave River.

Terms and conditions

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site or found by following any link on this site. The owner will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. The owner will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. These terms and conditions of use are subject to change at anytime and without notice.As for our suggested itineraries, though every possible effort to provide accurate information on this site, you are solely responsible for interpreting and using this information to organize your trip and excursion and to evaluate all potential hazards according to your own capacities and risks inherent to the different natural environments.

World War I in Maserada sul Piave

Maserada sul Piave is a small town in the North-East of Italy (Venice area), located in the middle course of the river Piave. After the notorious rout of Caporetto (October 1917), the river Piave became the Italian extreme defensive front. This location and the river Piave are particularly interesting in the scenario of the three main battles of the last year of the Great War: the First Piave Battle (November 1917), the Battle of the Solstice (known as Battle of Middle June 1918) and the final Battle of Vittorio Veneto, that led to the Armistice between Italy and Central Powers. In this locations, the British and the Italian armies faced together the Austro-Hungarians. The British Army was stationed here and that's why our village is an example of a location shared by two national armies cooperating in war operations. The museum located in the village is aiming to become a reference point in Italy for the history of a foreign contingent, namely what we know as the British Campaign in Italy 1917-1918. Since 2008 it has been building local and international partnerships in order also to create events and organize battlefield tours in this area.

Can you build a WWI Bridge with us?

If you're a Great War enthusiast; if you think of having something interesting to point out; if you think that the memory of the Great War should grow around a network of people constantly sharing views on this; if you think that war was not and is not only a matter of weapons; if you stop a second when you read the words "First" and "World"; if you sometimes think that the Great War centenary is getting closer; if you quiver every time you watch Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory; if you strongly believe that the real challange is to find new strategies to tell the story of this war to the digital natives. Briefly, if you discover yourself twanging like a chord every time you get close to this topic and if you wish to throw new bridges around First World War knowledge, we would be more than happy to listen to your suggestions, comments and opinions.

Please take a look also to the web site of the friends of the Maserada World War I Museum and write your emails to this address. You may also follow us on Twitter.Thank you for connecting though WWI Bridges!